The Tell (40 page)

The wind in the parking lot was gentle in contrast to the gale on the beach, but the sand still pinged as it covered the car in a fine dust. Owen imagined that if they left the car there long enough, it would eventually disappear. Inside, he reached under the front seat for Edward's hat, which had been kicked there by his enthusiasm. Owen's cell phone rang, and he fumbled for it with his cold hands, dropping it into the seam of the seat. All rings were urgent when you weren't expecting them. He shouted into the phone as if he were screaming down a hole.

The voice on the other end was making sure it had the right Owen Brewer. A cloud dipped behind the dune and the grass stood still. And what a brilliant, exhilarating toothpaste blue and white the air was at that moment. Owen had never seen anything like it. The man explained that he was a homicide detective in Manhattan, but why, Owen wondered, was he calling from New York? He squeezed himself behind the front seat, contorted on the car floor. He focused on the scattering of sand on the mat, the single grains.

“We have some news,” the man said.

“Hold on.”

Owen reached to lock the doors. If the man on the phone used the word “found,” what would that mean? Found like a hat kicked under the seat, found like the earring under the rug, found like something you'd buried in the schoolyard?
Found
was something that couldn't reveal itself. Found was a body. “Okay. I'm here.”

But he was suddenly dense and couldn't understand what the man was saying. The noise in his ear was too loud. “I don't know what you're talking about,” Owen shouted. “What about Wilton?”

“Wilton? What's Wilton? I'm talking about Rumford. He's the one.”

Owen pictured the detective leaning into the phone, speaking more deliberately now, as though Owen was addled. A confession, the man said. Rumford was a boaster, an idiot, a blabbermouth, and what did he have to lose talking about how he'd shot a woman years ago in a restaurant, when he was going to spend the rest of his life in prison anyway for killing someone else?

“Rumford?” Owen asked. Having a name for the shooter was a terrible intimacy. He wished he'd never heard it. He watched the wind blow the grass horizontal. “Rumford?” he asked. “Not Wilton?”

“Christ, yes. Rumford. Correct.”

Owen had believed Caroline's killer would never be caught, that there were lots of people in the world who simply got away with the very worst things. The man's free-roaming presence had always been a part of his weather, he understood, but now that he had a name and was caged, Owen didn't feel relief. He felt oddly vacant.

“Did you have to call me?” he asked.

“Have to? Look, I thought you'd want to know. Most people do.” The detective was tired of Owen and closing up the conversation by speaking to someone he was with, and then he was gone.

So the ending was as mundane as could be. The lucky break was always tepid—and nothing more than luck. What did he care if the guy was in prison? Better for Owen to imagine the story and its players and die with his version of things tucked under his tongue, so that he might tell it differently in another life. He folded up the news, put it away, and went out to the dunes again. He wondered if the others would be able to read his face and see something different, but they had gone down the beach and close to the water's edge. Edward was wearing Anya's hat, while her hair lifted into the air.

Later, when they got back to the house, Mira fell into a weighty sleep on the couch with her legs pulled under her, and Katherine and Edward went into the bedroom. The cold had worn them out, but Owen was antsy. While Anya pretended to be engrossed in one of Edward's ancient
Audubon
magazines, Owen walked to the shoulder of Route 6, where he stood for a while, watching the sporadic late Saturday afternoon traffic pass. A car came out of the pond road, a monstrous white SUV driven by the woman with the red hair. She turned right in the direction of Provincetown without noticing him. He tried to imagine what they would have said to each other if she'd stopped. The news of his phone call was shapeless still, nothing he could pull out and show. He wanted to toss it out on the highway and watch it get run over.

Mira and Anya were setting the table for dinner when he came in from his walk.

If one woman put down a fork, the other moved it; one refused to yield to the other. Mira orbited Anya, mumbling, pulling her bulky sweater tighter round her. Anya said something back.

“Well, I'm sorry you feel that way,” Mira said, suddenly fierce. Edward and Katherine had emerged from the bedroom and were looking on drowsily. “But you're probably right: you shouldn't have come.”

The silence was punctuated by the dog's wheezy fart. “Well put, Rey,” Edward said.

“Let them talk, Eddie,” Katherine scolded. “For god's sake, stay out of it.”

Anya backed up to a wall. “You should have stayed with him. What kind of a friend leaves another when he's in trouble?”

“You don't think I know that?” Mira folded a paper napkin, her fury contained in that controlled motion. “I won't ever forgive myself for that. I think about it every single minute.”

Anya watched Mira's careful movements, and seemed, for an instant, to soften. She looked down at her feet in the gray socks Edward had given her for warmth. She also wore a sweater of his—stretched-out, the wrists and neck moth-eaten. The wind hissed as it slipped into the house around the windows. “Did he ever talk to you about me?”

Mira stopped and looked at Anya. “Are you kidding? All the time. You have no idea how much he loves you.” Owen could tell that Mira was considering some hard piece of truth—and whether she should give the softer lie to Anya instead. “He thought things were going really well between you two. He knew your getting back together, your moving in, wasn't going to happen immediately, but he was always hopeful. He wanted to let you do it the way you wanted, even if it took a long time. So yes, he talked about you. Everything else was just a diversion. He thought you were much nicer to him than he deserved.” Mira's look said she thought otherwise.

“I wasn't nice to him,” Anya said and ran into the bathroom. Minutes passed as they listened to the water running in the sink.

“Do you think she's crying?” Edward whispered.

“I imagine she is,” Mira said.

“It seems to me that's exactly what she should be doing under the circumstances—having lost her father,” Katherine said.

“Not lost,” Owen insisted. “Just missing.”

Edward shook his head. “You don't really believe that anymore, do you?”

Mira's gaze was intent on Owen, asking,
Yes, what do you believe?

Tell her, Owen urged himself, tell everyone what you've done, what you said, how you betrayed the man, how you told him to kill himself, and he'd likely done just that. He imagined that if he applied all the pressure in his head and chest to his words, he could turn them into diamonds he might hand out instead as recompense. Edward gave him a sideways glance. Water splashed in the bathroom. Release them, he told himself. Release Mira and Anya.

Anya came out of the bathroom and dabbed at the water on the front of the sweater. She gave the room a forced smile and sat at the table. “Just so you know, I heard everything you said,” she told them. “But my father's in love and he'll be back.”

Her resolve—her sunny, romantic scenario—muted them, and at times the silence in the room took flight and squawked in relief across the pond. But soon, loosened by the wine Edward kept pouring into her glass, Anya began to describe what it was like sleeping in her father's almost empty house, how she saw shadows and heard noises all the time, and how she didn't understand how Wilton could have lived there by himself. Her cheeks were red. She swiped her hair behind her ears. Mira didn't look up.

“Most people aren't meant to be alone,” Katherine told her. “If they were, they wouldn't fall in love. It does have a purpose.” She smoothed Edward's hand. Her presence beside him at the table made its point; she would protect Edward from everything.

When Katherine brought over the listing cake, they sang a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday.” They made the noise of a hundred people. Edward blew out the single, yellowed hurricane candle and cut huge, sloppy slices. They picked gumdrops out of their teeth. Mira went out to the car and returned with something in bright wrapping paper. When she put it in front of Edward, he drew back.

“It's a present. It's not going to bite you,” Mira said. “Open it.”

“I don't need a present.”

“No one
needs
a present,” Mira said. “That's the point.”

Edward pushed the package at Anya. “Then you open it.”

She pushed it back. “But it's not my birthday.”

Edward unwrapped the gift with excruciating care, lifting each piece of tape off the paper. Mira had given him a Chinese bronze crane, about seven inches tall, with swooping tail feathers. It was one of those entirely familiar objects that had been on the mantelpiece in the bedroom forever, but one that Owen had never stopped to really look at. He knew it—but he didn't know it. What did it mean that Mira was giving her things away?

“It's very beautiful,” Edward said and put the bird in the center of the table. “Thank you.”

“It's not useful, you know,” Mira told him. “It doesn't do anything. It's just to look at, a thing.”

“I'll have to get used to that,” Edward said.

Owen stood. “I need to tell you something.” He waited for their gaze. “When we were at the beach before, I got a call from a detective in New York.” Mira's hand flew to her mouth, as if she didn't want the words about Wilton said by anyone. Anya's head was down, but her eyes were lifted. “They found the gunman. The man who killed Caroline.”

Mira's hand was still over her mouth; Owen hadn't said the words she'd wanted to hear.

Edward leaned back in his chair and a smile lifted his face. “Now this is a damn good birthday present.” He waved his fork in the air. “So he'll go to prison.”

“He's already there,” Owen said.

“And with any luck, someone will kill the prick in his sleep. No, actually, when he's awake so he can see it coming, so the last thing he knows before he dies is fear. Maybe it will happen when he's in the shower, or on the toilet. A knife into the neck. Great, goddamn great news.”

“Eddie. Where do you get these ideas?” Katherine said.

Mira looked at Owen. “This is amazing, O. After all this time, they found him. You must be relieved.”

Her tone was as intimate and naked as though they were the only two people in the room. Owen also heard her distance. He remembered Wilton's counterpunch story, true or not, about Mira, and how she'd asked him if Owen would have saved her if she'd been in Caroline's place. He wondered if it was this question that had driven her to risk everything, to see if he'd pull her back. Wilton had called Mira jealous, but Owen knew it wasn't that; she was afraid she'd slip away, like Caroline had, while he watched.

He returned her look. “I haven't thought about it in years,” he said.

Edward let his chair fall forward and he slapped the table. “That's bullshit, Owen,” he roared. “Of course you have. You were always thinking about it, every minute of your life since it happened. It
made
your life. It
was
your life.” He was oiled with wine and sentiment. “You're going to live forever now. Nothing's going to happen to you. Isn't that right?”

“Edward, honey,” Katherine soothed.

“Isn't that right?” he asked again. “Tell me.”

Owen nodded. His father was right; Owen had always been thinking of the shooting, and of what he did and didn't do, every minute since. He'd always been waiting to do things differently and better the next time, but he'd stalled. He'd seen how close the end of life was, and how the edge was always in sight, and he'd been stuck because of it; he hadn't moved. When he sat, Mira put her warm palm on the back of his neck.

“A child can think about a parent's death, but never the other way around,” Edward said, ignoring the tears collecting on his chin. “My son has known four missing people now. His mother, the man with the gun, Caroline, and now Wilton.”

“My mother wasn't missing,” Owen said. “She was dead. Big difference.”

“The dead are always missing,” Edward said. “We don't really know where they've gone.”

“But the missing aren't always dead,” Anya announced. “My father is not dead.”

It was as though they'd forgotten about her, and it was her voice that made them notice her again and how she looked, wild with grief.

Mira got up and stood behind Anya. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said. She hesitated and then bent to kiss her on the head. Confusion framed Anya's face. She was not impervious to kindness. She looked pleadingly at Owen, but he could say nothing. Mira stayed with her hands on the girl's shoulders. “We have to start thinking that he might be.”